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Snapshot

Maura Fitzgerald

Front row. Terrence stands alone, his right hand reaching across and gripping his left wrist as if to keep it still. Back row. His father, always squinting, the one who still asks Terrence to “toss the pigskin” although in thirty-seven years Terrence has never said yes. Next to his father stands his mother who is always last to join the group for the photo, her hands reaching behind, struggling to untie the apron she never gets off in time. To his right is Rob, the younger brother who sails out of Sakonnet Bay and Charleston, pulling ropes and strategically shifting his weight, assuring Whimsy comes home before the others. On the end is his sister Rosemary, the only one he lets visit, her choppy black hair and noisy neon leggings interrupting Wednesdays, relieving the suffocating paleness of his surroundings. Behind them all, in the background, a tray of vodka tonics waits on a glass table, the limes losing color as they drown in the alcohol. Just beyond that, impatiens line the blacktop driveway that leads into the garage where rows of tools arranged by size hang above the workbench, except for the felling axe, Terrence’s favorite, the one he used some years ago during a particularly embarrassing break to unsuccessfully sever his left hand and which now leans against the wall, its weight too much for the peg board to support.